


Fear to Tread

by isaksara (syailendra)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, OR IS IT, Our Angels Are Different, Reincarnation?, Star-crossed, Temporary Character Death, You Should Have Come to Shiratorizawa, one second of iwaoi, the Whole Relationship Rollercoaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23170519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syailendra/pseuds/isaksara
Summary: Heaven is a place on Earth with you.
Relationships: Semi Eita/Shirabu Kenjirou, Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	Fear to Tread

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this drawing of Shirabu with a sword](https://twitter.com/akkkk_ymmt/status/1171092034494464000?s=21) (please have a look! It's neat!) while listening to the [Scala and Kolacny Brothers' cover of Engel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfClF6MoG8) and this fic sprang fully-formed from my head like Athena from the head of Zeus.
> 
> The title is from a line in Alexander Pope's poem: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
> 
> I don't have classes because of the coronavirus and instead of doing the make-up work I decided to write about volleyball boys in unreasonably dramatic situations. Very sorry. Stay safe, everyone!

_"And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God."_

_\- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables_

* * *

_(xii)_

There is a beautiful man in the coffeeshop.

This in itself is not a remarkable occurrence. The coffeeshop is one of those hip joints at the intersection between a street of boutiques and an avenue of small galleries. The neighborhood could not scream gentrification any louder if it got on top of a repurposed oakwood balcony in a pair of hand-dyed pants and blasted it to the world. Eita sees, on average, two beautiful men and five beautiful women per visit.

This one is different. It is difficult to pinpoint how. He has light brown hair that burns gold in the light, but this is not new. He has delicate porcelain hands and a rosebud mouth, but neither of these things are new. His loose silk shirt is tucked into a well-cut pair of slacks, but this is also not new. He is looking at his phone, as one does. Eita watches the movement of his mouth as he orders. Was he the pianist in last week’s jazz club special? Did Eita pass him at the client’s office, last month? Could he have been reading a magazine at the bar of the Shangri-La, this Tuesday? Maybe that’s what’s different.

His therapist had told him to keep a dream journal. Not because she thinks his hell dreams of jagged blades and screeching eagles made of blood actually mean anything, but so he knows what he has just woken up from. The journal helps him paint, sometimes, which is the only happy accident his fucked-up night brain has given him. Eita looks at the beautiful man and suddenly feels the sudden urge to skim his journal.

The beautiful man receives his drink in his delicate hands. Eita settles down to watch him walk out the door, but the beautiful man stands there and turns his head this way and that. There are no empty tables, which is to be expected. Eita concludes that the beautiful man has never been here before, otherwise he would have anticipated it.

He ends up making a beeline for Eita’s table. Eita must have done something good in a past life.

“Hello,” he says. Eita greets him back, because he has manners. “Do you mind if I sit here for a while? It looks like it’s going to rain.”

Eita glances out the window. It has begun to rain. Fat droplets mark the asphalt outside like spots on a leopard. People in sheer tops raise their pashminas over their heads as they run for shelter. The world descends into pandemonium outside, but in this district even that looks very nice.

“No problem. Semi Eita.”

“Shirabu Kenjirou,” the beautiful man says, sitting across him. This close, Eita can make out the color of his eyes: an autumn leaf, seen through a prism. The name feels like it belongs in his mouth.

“Have we met before? You seem familiar.”

“I get that a lot.” Shirabu shrugs. “I must have a common face.”

Somehow Eita doubts it.

* * *

_(vii)_

It would be nice if he could say the world goes to hell on a Friday or something similarly snappy, but he cannot. The world goes to hell in an almost one hundred percent literal sense along an exponential curve, with axes of hell and time. The hell-ness is a pandemic.

Eita arrives in Rome and finds the windows overflowing with dark, sluggish liquid. Sheets of it advance threateningly down the streets, lapping languidly against the walls of churches. It is like old blood pooling under a door. It floods the alleys, and humans go about their business waist-deep in it. Charred vultures circle the air above their heads. Oil-slick jellyfish wound their tentacles around the limbs of the populace.

Eita reloads, points, shoots. Again. Again. The jellyfish attached to a lady’s torso disappears. She smiles a little, but only just a little.

“You know that doesn’t really do anything,” says a tetchy voice behind him. Eita frowns.

“Good to know the situation’s finally bad enough to bring in the big guns.” He doesn’t turn. “Or are you here just to make fun of me?”

“I don’t do that,” Shirabu says, but Eita is not interested in having this argument. Eita is not interested in having any argument at all with Shirabu. “Why are you here?”

Eita has orders, which he tells Shirabu. He keeps walking, but he can feel Shirabu move behind him as he does. He’s always been hyper-aware of him. Once it was a necessary precaution, then a hazard of his emotional state. Now it’s a character flaw.

“You shouldn’t be here.” 

He never minces his words, that one. 

“That one-rank difference isn’t nearly as significant as you think.”

In truth, he’s over it. The process of getting over it began the moment he first saw the burning arc Shirabu’s blade could carve in the night air. He finished getting over it just a little too late for that to matter, but still. Easier to let Shirabu think it’s about that, rather than anything else.

Shirabu materializes in front of him. Eita hates it when he does that, because he has no time to prepare for his objectively breathtaking appearance. He may be a being of more than flesh but whatever counts as his body still feels like he’s being drawn towards Shirabu, who looks at him like there’s anything left for him to judge. Eita wants to pull him into his arms and taste him again. Eita wants to never see his face again.

“Semi-san,” Shirabu says. He might be exasperated. Eita chooses not to perceive it.

“Shirabu- _sama_ ,” Eita grinds out. Shirabu gazes at him coolly.

“If you’re going to be that way. My orders are the same as yours.”

They told Eita they were going to send a cherub, but Eita had assumed it would be Tendou. He tells Shirabu this. He also tells Shirabu that means he must have known he would be partnered with a thronos, so he can stuff his _you shouldn’t be here_ up his four-winged ass.

“I thought it was going to be someone else too. I thought it would be Taichi. Heaven trusts us to be professional, I suppose.”

Eita scoffs. 

“Man, I’ve always been professional.”

“Of course,” Shirabu says, suddenly sounding sad. Eita would not know what that sounded like if he hadn’t spent so much time trying to isolate the different emotions Shirabu diluted—in the tiniest concentrations, mind you—in his speech patterns. That he still has the knowledge is also a character flaw.

He keeps walking. Shirabu falls into step beside him, manifesting a different outfit. It’s a dark longcoat that almost sweeps the ground. It’s the same color as the gunk in the pipelines, in the eyes of the salarymen walking past. Eita half wishes he would manifest the old blazer and checkered pants, just to get into character. Be the person he was, back when Eita knew him. Be the person he was back when he really could explain his own actions.

“What’s the plan, Semi-san?”

Semi explains as they walk. This part, at least, is easy, and Shirabu listens. Shirabu always listens. Eita suspects that Shirabu will make seraph one day, and he’ll still come down to listen to Eita. He’ll be as caustic as always, but he will ask Eita about his plan. And then, as before: they will be invincible.

* * *

_(i)_

The day Eita meets Shirabu Kenjirou for the first time is a bad one. He’d made Reon leave to call for backup, which he had considered a tactical decision. Now the tactical decision is coming back to bite him in the ass. 

There are many names for the thing currently threatening to fuck Eita up: demons, oni, noise, djinn. There are many definitions: the corruption of the psyche, the dark energy of the flipside of the universe, the vengeance shed by the dead. This would all sound very abstract to a human being, just as abstract as a frag grenade seems to Eita. Eita will never die where a battle is taking place. He can only die in what remains after the dust has cleared.

An obsidian claw blows a chasm into the ground next to Eita’s head. He rolls and jumps upright, brings his gun up to spray bullets at the creature’s mouth. This place was a village, once. Children must have played where the demon now stands. The patch of sand his feet are sinking into is mud-like with blood. It is only appropriate to model his weapons after the things that turned these towns into his hunting grounds. 

Most of the others prefer more old-fashioned weaponry. They’ve always been big on tradition, collectively.

A barbed proboscis pierces Eita’s shoulder; he grips it, sends a shock of raw energy with a bleeding hand. When he looks up, a scorpion’s tail is zooming towards him, its conical tip headed right for his chest—his body is still pinned down by the thing in his shoulder—he can’t _move—_

A second crescent moon made out of flame outshines the real thing. The scorpion’s tail splits in the middle, then drops. Eita manages to yank out the butterfly mouth out of his body, rushing to join the pale figure that takes to the air, slicing each demon into little black ribbons. Eita does his part, charging the air with the beat of bullets. Red mist fills the air.

Some people go about this job with care and reverence. You never know where the demon you’re slaying sprung from. You never know what kind of grief gave birth to it.

It’s abundantly clear Reon’s backup didn’t get the memo. He lands on his oxford-clad feet in front of Eita, barely disturbing the sand as he pushes his katana back in its scabbard. The reaction force of his landing blows the back of his white blazer out behind him. His light brown hair fans out around his head. It would be incredibly tacky for Eita to be reminded of wings and a halo. He thinks of those things anyway.

“Thanks,” he says, because he has manners. Then, because he has pride: “Although I was doing okay.”

“Of course, senpai.”

Ah. A smartass. Eita raises an eyebrow. “Is that a school uniform?”

“Yes,” the newcomer says, like he’s daring Eita to say anything else about it. Eita decides to say something else about it.

“How old were you when you died?”

The answer is eighteen, just four days before his graduation day. That was five years ago. Which means Eita has the upper hand, because he died at nineteen and has been nineteen for six years. He considers the moniker ‘senpai’.

“Semi is fine, you know. And you are?”

“Shirabu Kenjirou,” he says. “Thronos. I was a dominion until last spring.”

“Huh. Reon didn’t send anyone else?” Eita knows his friend is confident in his abilities, but he will have to give him some stern words about sending a green thronos into a battle even Eita could have lost. Even though Shirabu did win it. It’s the thought that counts.

Shirabu looks behind him like physical direction means anything. “Goshiki and Tendou-san are also on their way, I was told. But I was closer.”

“Tendou, huh?” Eita whistles. “Must be a peaceful day everywhere else in the world.”

Shirabu regards the scorpion tail bits he’d just cut up. After the initial ruffling done by the wind, his hair has settled into a sleek bowl cut that should, by all rights, look extremely ridiculous. Eita is wary of the smoking sword at his hip and the detached look in his eyes. As in life, as in death, wisdom is the same thing. You have to watch out for the ones going full throttle with nothing to lose.

* * *

_(v)_

Eita lost a lot of motorcycle races in his lifetime. The last loss had been fatal. Losing a motorcycle race is a quick, one-time thing. It’s over with the trill of a whistle. You look up, you lose, and you promise to beat the other fuckers the next time around. You know you’ve lost, so you know you have another shot to win. You have an infinite number of chances to win.

He has never lost slowly, with no promise of a rematch. He has never lost more than one race at the same time.

* * *

_(vi)_

Waiting for the other shoe to drop has Eita off his game. Kawanishi comments on it. Tendou comments on it. Reon comments on it. Hell, even Goshiki comments on it. Kenjirou does not comment on it, because he isn’t there. 

When Kenjirou breaks it off between them a month after he makes it into the ranks of the cherubim, Eita shoots at him just to see the bullets bounce off his barrier. Ripples of opalescent purple and blue radiate from points of contact, obscuring Kenjirou’s face. Eita likes that he can’t see his eyes.

Kenjirou opens his mouth. Eita shoots. Kenjirou tries to explain. Eita shoots again.

“Would you just put the fucking gun down and let me speak, Eita?” Kenjirou screams. It is terribly undignified and it is the most like himself he has been since he ascended. 

The chasm between thronoi and cherubim. The chasm between Eita and Kenjirou. A chicken-or-egg problem. 

“What? Is it because I’m not good enough to guard the Garden of Eden?” Eita can scream back, lest Kenjirou forget. “Are you too good to fuck below your rank? Will you go for Ushijima next then? You always did use weird words to describe him. Majestic. Magnificent. _Divine_ , like we’re not all _fucking_ divine! Go ahead then! You’re prettier than Tendou anyway, aren’t you?”

Kenjirou holds his gaze. If he cries later it won’t be Eita’s job to hold him.

“You know what, maybe it is. Maybe you’re not good enough for me because you’re—“ here, a deep gulping breath, “—‘just a _thronos_ ,’ if that’s what you want it to be. So _you_ go ahead, Eita. You go let your insecurities make up whatever it is you think will explain things so all of it will revolve around you. Maybe one day you will wake up and realize not everything is a slight towards your fragile-ass ego.”

He’s lying and he makes no sense. Kenjirou is a wild card who’s too happy to stick a blade in places it might not be welcome, but he tells the truth and he makes sense. This is the pro/con table. This is how other people who aren’t Eita decide to keep him, presumably.

“Of course it has something to do with me. You’re breaking up with me! Why won’t you just tell me what it is so I can fix it?” It is with no reluctance at all that he reaches out to hold Kenjirou’s face in his hands. People say a lot of things about Eita’s pride but he knows when it counts for nothing. “You know I’ll fix it. We’ll be fine, and I’ll make it better. Whatever’s happening, I’ll make it better.”

“You can’t, Semi-san,” Kenjirou says. “This is me fixing it.”

So that’s what it feels like, to die. Ten years had been enough time to forget the sensation of your bones crumbling under the force of a collision. Your skin being scorched off your flesh. The soul of you, trickling out of your body, dissolving in a puddle of rainwater on the asphalt.

* * *

_(x)_

Heaven is a clean and bright place. Curtains of mist blanket the four-poster beds so you wake up to rainbows dancing in your line of sight. There is a faint scent of tuberose in the air and the water is ever-so-slightly sweet. If you’d been human, the day you wake up in Heaven, you see the world you wish you could have lived in when you were alive. 

Kenjirou wakes up to the same soft sheets and soothing harp music as any other angel. There is light streaming down every corner. Drops of dew shimmer like diamonds on the grass. There is a tree for every fruit on Earth that never runs out of perfectly-shaped, perfectly-colored, perfectly ripe fruit.

Kenjirou wakes up wanting to burn it all down. Kenjirou wakes up with the circlet on his head tightening like a noose.

A bony hand parts the wispy cascades on his left. The joints in each finger stick out, like the skeleton is trying to announce itself and overcome the skin. Like he’s skin and bone, and not an image projected by a sentient mind.

“Good morning, sunshine!”

Kenjirou doesn’t dignify that with a response. Tendou-san’s eyes are too wide for his face. His shock of red hair is an oddity in Heaven. For some reason, very few angels have red hair. Maybe it’s an association thing with the other place.

“Oh, he’s a quiet one… but of course he is! Of course he is. We can’t all be jibby-jabberers like me!” Kenjirou wonders who thought this could ever be considered appropriate bedside manner. Then Tendou-san reaches out to touch the cursed band of metal on Kenjirou’s head—the one identical to his own. “But it helps, right? Your head’s not a beehive not a bag of cymbals not the oil side of a deep fry anymore, right? Quieter! Everything’s quieter. You can hear yourself think and fifty others aren’t doing it for you!”

He’s not wrong. Kenjirou can finally hear himself think again, properly. There is only one thing he thinks about.

“When did you get it, Tendou-san?” Kenjirou asks.

Tendou blinks.

”After I stopped being so hung up on some school friends.” Tendou-san shrugs, then nods sagely. “Not for the reason you think! They never stopped making fun of me when I was alive, so I had to learn to forgive… something like that. I had it easy.”

Kenjirou is so envious he could choke him. He startles. He stares at his hands.

Tendou-san hums a sharp, rising note. “You’ll have more luck talking to Wakatoshi. I’ll call him over in a sec. Did you know? No one hates this place more than he does. It’s why we’re never here.”

“So why are you, then?” He’s tired. He wishes he could be more polite but it’s not like it matters to Tendou-san.

The cherub in question smiles at him. Kenjirou has seen Tendou-san smile often before. It is terrifying, stretching past the points on his cheeks where any ordinary smile should stop. His eyes go so round they’re practically bugging out. This is not that smile. It is smaller, more wistful. Kenjirou might dare to say it’s almost sad.

“We are worried about you.” Kenjirou bites back his retort. There is nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to be done, ergo it is less than useless to worry about it. He’s not actually eighteen fucking years old. He doesn’t need anyone to adopt him.

Instead, he starts sobbing. Violent, angry gasps wreak his body. His tears burn hotter than ichor. Tendou-san pulls him close with his bony arms so Kenjirou can stain his tunic with his wet face.

He knows for sure now that the arbitrary distinction between what is earthly and not is set by this place. Everything below this place is earthly. Then why does it feel no different to cry here? Why hasn’t the sorrow been lifted out of his soul by grace?

* * *

_(ii)_

Kenjirou first figures out there’s something off about Tendou Satori when he licks demon ichor off his arm just before he readies a spear to strike. There are a million points of pain on Kenjirou’s body; there’s a hole in his torso where a human liver would be, leaking gold past Semi’s frantic fingers; there’s real fear in Semi’s eyes for the first time since Kenjirou met him that night in Wazir Tangi. 

Tendou-san’s radiance traces the sharp lines of Semi’s face as though to highlight his beauty on purpose. Kenjirou considers the idea that he has been falling in love with Semi, despite his best efforts. 

Exhibit A: a rivalry. Consider how it can only exist if one deems the other party a standard to aspire to. Logically, this implies some kind of admiration. The corollary: Kenjirou never just wanted to match Semi kill for kill just to show him he was capable of doing so. The corollary: every time Semi decides to show he is capable of gentleness, there is an earthquake in Kenjirou’s chest.

He considers the feeling of being confessed to with a cherub shrieking delightedly in the background as he brings down the fury of Heaven. He is considering all this when a rolling wave of white fire rushes towards them, and Semi curls over him protectively. When he hears screaming he can’t tell if it’s Tendou-san or Semi anymore.

(Years later Kenjirou will find himself in a cave off the coast of Greece with the fallen angels Oikawa and Iwaizumi.

Oikawa hands him a peach slice. Kenjirou nibbles it gingerly.

“So have you met a cherub, then, Shirabu-kun?” Kenjirou is reminded instantly of white fire. His hands stained with gold when he touches Eita’s ruined back. The horror in his throat when a blackened feather dissolves into ash before his eyes. Ushijima-san pulling Tendou-san into his arms, telling him he’s done enough. “Ah, so you have.”

Ushijima-san had known the exact location of this cave. He had seared the map into Kenjirou’s mind, making Kenjirou scream. The only seraph Kenjirou has ever seen had looked out across the water and said, like noting the chill of the wind, that Oikawa should have been a seraph.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Mmm. In case you’re trying to fool yourself into thinking that’s a special case, don’t. They’re all like that. Ushijima was like that too when I knew him. Just in a different way. Silent. Takes you by surprise.”

Kenjirou asks why.

“The power punishes you for earthly connections. Even the ones you’d think fit the image of an angel.” It’s Iwaizumi, the other fallen angel, who answers as he retrieves a jug from somewhere in the back of the cave and pours out three cups. He hands one to Kenjirou before he sits back down next to Oikawa. The wine is delicious.

Oikawa smiles like he has a specific memory in mind. He does not share it. 

“Well, it certainly is a noble duty, the duty of the cherubim. But I never was particularly noble myself, you see.” 

Kenjirou thinks of Eita, at the children’s hospital, manifesting as corporeal with a sweet smile and a basket of conjured fruits. Of him kneeling in the ruins, a week later, as Kenjirou swept the area for demons. Why are you crying, Eita, Kenjirou had asked as he kissed the tears off his face. They are somewhere better now. A place where they’ll never know pain.

I know, Eita had said. I know.

Oikawa wipes a shining trail of peach juice from the corner of his mouth. Iwaizumi turns his eyes to the sea beyond the cave. They still look like any other pair of angels. Just out of sight, Kenjirou can sense their wings in the shimmer of the air. “A lot of people think I fell because I wanted to be with Iwa-chan. That I eloped. Is that right?”

Kenjirou confirms. Oikawa’s laughter is a lilting sound like the chiming of bells.

“Those poor fools. I just wanted myself back, you see. It felt like I was being burnt up from the inside out.”

Kenjirou thinks he sees Iwaizumi’s hand tighten around Oikawa’s. There is a flash of something haunted in his eyes.

It is two months before it is decided whether Kenjirou or Eita will become a cherub. It is two months before Eita looks at Kenjirou like he’d pushed his blade into Eita’s back.)

* * *

_(iv)_

Eita wanted to be promoted to cherub because he believed he could do more good with more power.

Kenjirou wanted to be promoted to cherub because a) he was competent enough to be qualified, and b) Eita has a billion earthly connections, one for every suffering child in the world—Kenjirou has just the one.

* * *

_(viii)_

In Milan, Eita clips a wing and Shirabu forces him to stay down as he coaxes it to heal. Eita pretends it’s rank authority that allows Shirabu to heal him. If they both know it’s not true, Shirabu at least has the good sense to keep his mouth shut about it. In Lyon, they receive instructions to proceed to the edge of the North Sea. 

In Paris, Eita is swept away through the tunnels of the catacombs in a torrent of black bile, with a ring of shark-tooth puncture wounds in his side. He hears Shirabu scream his name. 

He gulps down a mouthful of air before the tide pulls him under the surface, and he sees nothing. His fingers slip on the sludge of despair when he tries to find purchase along the walls. Eita has no lungs to burn, but he feels the suffocation anyway.

Then suddenly the sound of a shriek that pierces straight into his skull resounds. Suddenly Eita is swimming in thin amber liquid. Suddenly he can breathe. He propels himself to the source of the screaming, to the beacon broadcasting his name. He is bleeding and lightheaded from it. He has to find Shirabu before he loses consciousness.

Something tells him he will prevent a calamity by doing so.

He arrives at the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp to the sight of two monsters, facing off. Shirabu’s blade is buried deep in the bear’s neck, slicing through one of its three faces. Shirabu’s four wings vibrate with fury. Heaven is a reign of at least three parts fear to one part comfort. Here you find fear. Here you find terror.

When Shirabu roars as he draws back his face is that of a lion’s. When he strikes forward to pull his blade out in a slick red arc, his face is that of an eagle’s. When he beats the bear’s carcass to dust, his face is that of an ox’s. He slumps to the floor.

When he looks up to face Eita, his face is wholly Shirabu’s, splattered with crimson. Demon blood drenches him all the way down to his feet. Eita takes a step forward. Shirabu shrieks and a shockwave of white fire explodes from him, inflicting Eita’s wounded side with burns.

After his promotion Shirabu had started talking to himself. Screaming in his sleep. Getting debilitating migraines.

Eita had hoped it would get better with time, even without him there to help him through. Eita rarely gets what he hopes for. He kneels in front of Shirabu, who lets him hold his hand.

“That’s enough, Shirabu.” Eita feels Shirabu’s blade slowly pierce through his palm. “ _Kenjirou._ Stop.”

Shirabu stops stabbing him. The crypt dims down again so the only sources of light are their softly glowing forms. There’s a flicker of horror in Shirabu’s eyes when he sees his sword in Semi’s palm, but it is soon overridden by blankness.

“What the hell was that?”

Back during their time together Eita was finally able to stop Shirabu from shutting down every time he feels like he fucked up. Shirabu after a mistake is the perfect thing, on paper: contrition, an articulate apology. A wall of white noise so wide it’s an ocean.

“I’m sorry, Semi-san.”

So they’re back at that after all.

“Don’t give me that. Kenjirou.” He yanks Shirabu’s sword out of his hand. Ichor spurts out. Shirabu makes a low, wounded noise like _he’d_ been stabbed. “Is there any way for this to stop?”

“I tried,” he says softly. “I don’t think it’s possible for me.”

“Did you know? That this would happen?” Eita asks urgently, stroking Kenjirou’s cheek to soothe him. Kenjirou closes his eyes, and Eita pulls him closer, puts his other arm around him. Most of the time he would not allow himself to be comforted. But he would allow himself to be held.

This, too, Eita still remembers.

“Yes. I asked.”

(Eita had demanded of him, with barely controlled fury, why he took the offer. Kenjirou knew what it meant for Eita. What the hell could it possibly mean for him?

Kenjirou had not answered him then. He had only asked for forgiveness. Eita gave it to him after a while, but by that time Kenjirou had not been his anymore.)

“Tell me there’s something I can do to help you. You said you don’t think it’s possible for you—what’s causing it? Let me help. No one else has to know.” Kenjirou trembles. “Please, Kenjirou.”

Kenjirou takes a shuddering breath like it’s scalding the inside of his body.

“I told you, you can’t. I have to leave behind all earthly connections.” Tendou had told Eita about the list once, laughing all the while. An eternity dedicated to serving Heaven. A love only for the judgment of true divinity. A soul entirely consumed by duty. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Giving you up is impossible.”

Then Kenjirou kisses him. A dam breaks inside of Eita, and he is nothing but the love he’d locked away, that day when Kenjirou left him. Nothing but the sheer thrill of fighting back-to-back. Nothing but the gentle tide of joy that settles over him when he wakes up next to Kenjirou. Nothing but the future he thought they’d always have together, stretching on into eternity.

I’m sorry, he wants to say. I’m sorry we have made it this way. Perhaps it was his selfishness that disqualified him from Heaven’s considerations. Not once would he have considered trying to stop loving Kenjirou. He would rather have the fire of Heaven reduce him to ash.

* * *

_(iii)_

Shirabu slings a wide arc of blue flame upwards and hurtles into free fall. A meteor in the inky depths of space. The maw of the demon below opens wide to greet him; Eita sends a spray of bullets to the ravens crying for his flesh then throws himself across the reach of space to yank Shirabu out of his doomed trajectory.

Shirabu’s assault lands on its intended target. A dragon’s corpse shakes the earth when it lands.

“Are you crazy?” Eita yells, pulling Shirabu up. “You would’ve been dead back there if I hadn’t gotten to you! Don’t pull stunts like that, you idiot.”

Shirabu gives him a look. “I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t sure I could trust you to catch me.”

Eita’s breath catches. This asshole has to stop saying shit like that before Eita just up and blurts out everything.

“Whatever. We’re not done here. Follow my lead.”

Shirabu nods briskly. This is the fun part.

They match each other’s kills one-for-one, strikes for shots. There are a number of reasons why two angels could make a good hunting pair. They have complimentary fighting styles, as with Shirabu and his sword, supported by Eita’s ranged weapons. They seek the same thing in a hunt: the artistry of combat. It is not a clock-in-clock-out thing, for either of them. Last but not least, a powerful force is shared motivation. Eita will never bear to lose to this graceful upstart and his cold eyes. Likewise—he’s too proud to show it, but Eita’s perceptive enough to see—Shirabu is always trying to prove himself.

Along the way, it becomes comfortable. When Eita shoots a barrage to force a demon to move one way, Shirabu is there with his finishing blow; when Shirabu makes a risky play against more than one opponent, Eita is there to take the rest. Things become simple. Shirabu can be unpredictable, but when Eita asks him not to be, he obeys.

Yet even at his tamest he is as heart-stopping as a meteor.

The moment Eita realized he had fallen for Shirabu was a few months after they’d each revealed how they died. A few months after Shirabu had dropped the honorific from his name. Eita had overexerted himself. Shirabu had stayed by his side, channeling energy to him to revive him. He’d huffed as Eita gained feeling in his limbs.

“No wonder you crashed your goddamn motorcycle, living like that,” Shirabu grumbled, and Eita had _laughed_. That was the moment he knew he was a goner.

It is easy to be reminded again of his feelings whenever Shirabu’s graceful form sends arcs of light sailing through the air with swings of his sword. It is easy to be reminded again when they find themselves back-to-back, firing off attacks at a circle of demons. It is easy to be reminded of his captive heart when Shirabu lands on the ground, sending up a swirl of dust, the gleam of his blade still bright in his eyes, the thrum of battle still clear in his stride.

This has been an unusual hunt, taking place in a city where most people are asleep and safe in their beds. Lately they have been to places other than warzones. Lately the human populace has fallen into the illness of despair. In the hush of the still night, they nearly don’t notice when a snake slithers in behind them. Eita feels a rustle behind them; he hears Shirabu yell his name; he is being thrown backwards by the snake’s tail, watching fangs sink into Shirabu’s shoulder. Shirabu screams.

Eita is up in an instant. If the grenade launcher is overkill he dares anyone to comment on it. Once the snake has disintegrated, he is kneeling by Shirabu, using his hands to stop the flow of ichor.

“It’s going to be okay.” Shirabu’s eyes are unfocused. There’s a black tinge around the edges of the puncture wounds Eita doesn’t know how to deal with. Does he suck the poison out? He tries it, and Shirabu’s shoulder bursts into purple flame. He hears him gasp.

The black marks disappear. The wounds begin to close.

“You’ll be fine. Hang in there, Shirabu. You can do this.”

“Semi,” Shirabu says in a very small voice. Eita cradles his head in his hands. “I’m in love with you.”

He promptly passes out, but his energy remains strong. He should be alright. Eita huffs a sigh of relief.

Shirabu’s face is peaceful under the moonlight, like he hasn't just turned Eita’s world upside down. Damn brat. He always _has_ to upstage Eita.

* * *

_(ix)_

A kraken has crawled out of the depths of the sea to spread its tentacles over The Hague. There are barracudas zipping through the morning air, over sea snakes winding themselves around old ladies heading to markets, over anemones sprouting up amongst the fire hydrants. A flock of manta rays glide through the sky like inkblot clouds.

“Damn,” Eita says, watching a lady ride her bike covered in sludge. “That’s not right.”

“Yes. That’s why we’re to get rid of it as quickly as possible.”

“It’s kind of huge, Kenjirou.”

Kenjirou shrugs. “Ushijima-san is being sent as our backup. We should just wait— _shit_.”

As soon as he says this, a huge tentacle smacks the ground he was just standing on. Kenjirou jumps out of the way in the nick of time. The tentacle rises again to sweep in Eita’s direction. Above him, the flock of manta rays turn sharply to move towards him.

“Has this ever happened before?” he asks as he flies to Kenjirou’s side.

“I don’t know, you’ve been dead longer.” Kenjirou squints at the face of the kraken. It appears to squint back. “Why the hell is it _proactive_?”

“Think about that later. Kill first.” He turns and kisses Kenjirou quickly. “For good luck.”

Kenjirou rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. They take to the skies.

What it means to be an angel is to know that rising suicide rates is an indicator that your job is about to get more dangerous. What it means is that you understand that rage begets more rage. Guilt begets more guilt. When humans are not enough to contain these things they start to overwhelm everything else. They begin to colonize.

Kenjirou is a marvel. In the daylight it is difficult to see the flames, but whenever his blade meets demon flesh Eita is caught by the searing burn of the blaze. Light like nothing else. Eita blows out chunks of darkness. With a blast, he obliterates a school of quickly-darting black fish with teeth like the edge of a chainsaw. Again. Again. Whenever he thinks he’s getting closer to the kraken, another sea creature pops up in front of him.

If it isn’t for the movement of the sun to the west, then to the line of the water, Eita could never know how long he’s been fighting. They had arrived at first light. It is the middle of summer. Even Kenjirou is starting to show signs of strain.

The horde is thinning, but not enough. At this rate they will drop from exhaustion before they even reach the source.

“Where the hell is Ushijima?”

“Apparently there’s a similar situation in Warsaw!” Kenjirou is flung by a goblin shark’s tail into Eita’s arms. “He’ll be here as soon as possible!”

“That’s not good enough,” Eita mutters under his breath. Ahead of him, a tentacle widens like a battering ram.

They’re too tired to move quickly enough. Eita watches buildings go by below him as he shoots through the air. He yells when he lands on the spikes of a sea urchin; three go through his leg, two have pierced his side. They hold him up in the air. Below, Kenjirou dangles from the spike that has pierced cleanly through his arm.

“Did that thing just fucking shapeshift?”

There is no reply from Kenjirou.

He is looking at Eita. His eyes change. The larger retina of the eagle. The black slits among gold of a lion in the savannah sun. The egg-shaped pupils of an ox. Four blazing wings.

There is a scream that shatters the sound barrier. The urchin disintegrates into ashes. The scream doesn’t end.

Eita hobbles to the ground and catches his breath, manifesting cloth to tie up his wounds. Fire spreads across the skies as Kenjirou slashes across each creature. The tiger sharks, the jellyfish, the narwhals with their tusks. Only the kraken seems to hold on against his assaults. Almost everything else disappears.

Still, the scream doesn’t end. It rings out between Eita’s ears, within his chest. He can feel the weight of the power Kenjirou wields, the pressure of it against his every nerve. Of course he is screaming. He’s in agony.

“Kenjirou!”

No reaction.

Eita forces himself to float up to reach him. This has to stop. This has to stop, because he can feel Kenjirou start to self-destruct. Like he’s falling apart in his hands. Like all his blood is gasoline. He calls his name again.

The entire left side of his body is leaking; there is nothing but pain in his head—both his own and Kenjirou’s. Eita forces himself to go forward, barely dodging a swipe of a serrated tentacle in the process of growing thorns. Kenjirou floats in the air like a puppet hanging on a string.

Here’s the thing about racing. About javelin throwing, or anything that requires spatial awareness. You become accustomed to projecting trajectories. This is how, when Eita screams Kenjirou’s name and he doesn’t recognize it, Eita knows to hurl himself there and knock him out of the line of fire. He feels the thorn sink in. He feels it get yanked out, along with most of his chest.

Kenjirou chooses this moment to come to his senses and look at Eita with wide, horrified eyes. Eita wants to tell him not to be so afraid. He opens his mouth, and gold gurgles in his throat.

Ah.

He thinks he’ll fall out of the sky unless he does something. It got lost in the shuffling between orphanages and adoption agencies, the delinquency, and the self-destructive tendencies, but Eita always knew how to calculate how much you have left based on your fuel tank. Then you could do two things: you could slow down, and stop. Or—if the finish line was in sight—you could step on it and burst to the end in a blaze of fumes.

His fingertips ignite, then the rest of him. There is nothing but power and the endless possibility of the next few seconds; it is not the wings or the weapons that make an angel—it is the fire one uses to smite.

“Eita,” Kenjirou pleads.

If only he were smiling. If Eita could be selfish for one last time, he would ask that of him: please do not look afraid. I want to remember you at your happiest. Kenjirou moves towards him, takes Eita’s hands in his, and kisses them. The fire burns brighter. He reaches up and presses his mouth to Eita’s forehead. Brighter, brighter. Finally, he kisses Eita on the mouth. His hands cup Eita’s face to hold him steady.

He whispers against Eita’s lips: “Prevail.”

Kenjirou lets go, face serene and shining with tears. Eita smiles at him. He takes his first deep breath as a supernova.

Then he turns his eye to the enemy and flies like a bullet into its core.

It hurts more than anything. His skin is a sea of fire. His body is made up of a thousand needles puncturing inwards, outwards, inwards, outwards. The universe is scooping up his insides and pulling them out through his mouth. The hollow inside him is a pit of hellfire. He is nothing but a point of pain, an eternity of torment. He is the world when it was being forged. 

Then the flames fade, and he is less than nothing, plunging through the thin air and the ashes of a dead demon.

Eita stops falling. He is being held by a pair of gentle arms; the light of the sun diffuses behind Kenjirou’s face. They float down to the ground, ash falling like gray snow around them, and Eita can’t take his eyes off Kenjirou’s. Here are the wonders of the earth, even for angels: autumn leaves, as seen through a prism; the gleam of honey in the morning sun.

He lifts his hand to touch Kenjirou’s cheek and leaves a smear of gold. When he tries to tell him he loves him, all that comes out is ichor. There are still so many things he needs to say—apologies, words of gratitude. He wishes to make him laugh again.

“Hold on,” Kenjirou is saying. “Ushijima-san is on his way. Just hang on a little longer, Eita, please. Please.”

The break in his voice hurts more than blowing up. Eita smiles at him again, as though it would help anything. So that’s what it feels like, to die. It is unlike anything else, the feeling of your bones fading away into nothing. Your skin growing colder despite the warmth of being held. The soul of you, trickling out of your body, spilling into the hands of the one you love the most.

Eita’s arm grows too numb to support his hand, falling from Kenjirou’s face. Kenjirou’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth in the shape of Eita’s name. It is like Eita is witnessing this from underwater; he sees light resolve itself in a blurry band on Kenjirou’s head, crowning him. He hears nothing. Kenjirou leans down to kiss him and Eita doesn’t feel it.

Here’s an angel, Eita thinks, looking at Kenjirou, as his mind starts fluttering with the ashes in the wind. There is no other being worthy of the name.

* * *

_(xi)_

True to his word, Tendou-san summons Ushijima-san to Kenjirou’s side after he heads out. He does so a few minutes after Kenjirou can finally breathe normally, without tears choking him up.

“I was told you wished to speak with me.” Ushijima-san’s voice, in the quiet, is the rumble of an avalanche. It is the first time Shirabu has ever seen him up close—his dark hair, the stern twist of his mouth. He looks like somebody carved the image of force out of marble then brought it to life. “Satori was distraught. When we found you, it was as the moment I fully ascended. You turned the city into a lake of holy fire. It must have been very strange to the people living there.”

Kenjirou considers how to approach the matter.

“What did you lose, Ushijima-san?” he ends up asking. It’s not like he’s the type to get offended by directness.

He is quiet for a long moment. Kenjirou looks at his arm and wonders if he lost something else for that.

“Do you take the world to be so cruel, Shirabu?” Ushijima-san asks him. “Do you think judgment is indifferent to the misery of its subjects?”

“Yes,” Kenjirou replies without much rancor. He swears Ushijima-san smiles a little at that. He turns his head, to where Tendou-san is seated by the base of a huge redwood tree, carving patterns on the bark with a knife. Even from this far away Kenjirou can hear the snatches of the hymns Tendou-san is singing as he carves. Each note is a new notch.

“You are not wrong. But it plays favorites with us angels.”

In all the times Kenjirou has seen him, he has never found anything but the cold fury of a sword strike in Ushijima-san’s eyes. Now, as they watch Tendou-san finish his portrait of Ushijima-san on the side of the tree, Kenjirou thinks he sees how those eyes could be warm.

“I gained this when I lost him.” He touches the circlet of a full-fledged cherub on his head. Then he sweeps one hand over the mark of the seraphim that circles his right wrist and makes its delicate golden way, like a permanent trail of ichor, up his arm. “I gained this because I waited for him to return.”

Tendou-san gets up and brushes nonexistent grass stains from his knees. He starts to walk their way, eyes brighter than the jewels in the field. Angels are supposed to be beings of love and light, Kenjirou suddenly remembers. The goodwill and hope of the dead left behind to quell the agony of the Earth.

“Wa-ka-to-shi,” Tendou-san sing-songs. Ushijima-san’s face breaks out in a full smile at the sound of his name.

It is the sweetest word in all of Heaven.

* * *

_(∞)_

Kenjirou is no stranger to waking up by a window, as was his habit in the land of the living. He woke up every day to the conversation of machines, to the threads of plastic feeding oxygen to his lungs and liquid to his arteries. 

Robbed of the motion of his limbs, Kenjirou used to watch the birds in the window flit from branch to branch. They laid pale, speckled eggs, then raised their chicks in the harsh sunlight, spitting half-digested slurry into their gaping mouths. Some of them did not survive to leave the nest. They did not have the advantages of modern medicine. They only had mothers who did their best to keep them alive.

To this day, far beyond his faded memories of his death, Kenjirou wonders how his parents decided to take him off the machines. His parents had worked in venture capital. Perhaps he hadn’t been a prudent investment.

“You’re thinking about something,” Eita mumbles against his hair. “Share?”

Kenjirou turns to face him, to see the morning light bring out the speckles of color in his gray eyes, like the iridescent feathers of birds, shed on gravel roads. He traces the shape of Eita’s cheek with his hand, relishes the curve of his shoulder under Kenjirou’s fingers.

“Just the hospital. I used to hate mornings.”

The first demon Kenjirou ever killed, together with a girl he once saw in the cancer ward, had been in the hospital. Maybe there’s some meaning in that, about his life and how he felt. He tells Eita the story. Eita frowns.

“Harsh.”

He does not hate mornings anymore. They no longer mean endless hours of waiting for meals and the next bedtime, when he is free to dream of a world where he can fly among the birds. There is someone waiting for him, now, in the daytime. If you had told Kenjirou, when he was alive, that he would meet someone who fights for him, even at cost to himself, Kenjirou would have laughed at you—or whatever passes for laughter, between coughing fits.

There had been no predicting the day he would understand what it meant to shed tears for even the Heaven-bound. There had been no predicting the night he would watch someone take to the air with a gun in his hand and make Kenjirou want to live, to strive.

“It was a long time ago,” he tells Eita, moving in to kiss the corner of his mouth, the tip of his nose. “Now I’m here with you.”

Eita’s touch frees him from that particular ghost—from every ghost he comes across. As with Kenjirou, facing off against the demon shaped like him in the hospital ward. As with the relieved sigh of a city liberated from its inhabitants’ lingering misery by the grace of fire and flame. As with a battleground’s grudges laid to rest. To be an angel is to tread a path so that the ground behind you remembers only the feeling of children’s feet as they run to play; so that the air around you remembers only the laughter of families gathered round hearths; so that the sun casts everything in your vicinity in the light you reserve for the one who holds your heart.

There is no question of love or duty. The duty is to love.

**Author's Note:**

> You are free to place that last fragment anywhere you like in the timeline. ;)
> 
> If you've played The World Ends With You, you might notice that the concepts in this fic are expanded/bastardized versions of their Reapers and Angels. If you haven't played TWEWY, I wholeheartedly recommend you do so! It's good. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. Anyway come yell about Haikyuu with me on twitter if you want to (@kenmacarena)!


End file.
